A WORLD WITHOUT SUMMER

A dramatic examination of both the immediate and long-term effects of recorded history’s deadliest, most titanic blast: the 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora.

“The word loud isn’t loud enough. The word hot isn’t hot enough. The word— / None of the words are enough.” Award-winner Day offers readers a rousing recitation of the catastrophes resulting from this “unfathomable” natural disaster after the millions of tons of ash and sulfates belched out by the volcano created a worldwide “climate shock.” The results included floods, fires, crop failures, violent storms, disease outbreaks, and upended seasons: “A Feedback Loop of Bad,” as one chapter heading puts it. He also draws sweeping but plausible connections to less direct but no less consequential events, including Mary Shelley’s contemporaneous Frankenstein—he sees the book’s “transfixing weirdness” as “a story straight out of the madness that Tambora made”—and the beginnings of mass westward population movements in the U.S. and the development of modern meteorology. Day includes reflection questions for readers in several places and points to Tambora as a cautionary tale of what we will all face, climate-wise, if we don’t heed the warning signs. We’re inescapably part of our planet’s story, and “we’re not the main character.” Short chapters, a breathless narrative style, and spacious typography contribute to this work’s accessibility. Final art not seen.

Urgent and terrifying.